Hello UB,
Greetings from Las Vegas. Slow start to my WSOP so far but still plenty of time to reverse that. I decided to try my first video blog from the rental house im staying at. As you can see we dont have much fun down here when we arent playing poker 
.
Debo
Tomorrow I will be heading to Vegas for the World Series of Poker. I’ve decided to drive this year since I will be there for the better part of 7 weeks. The drive will take me about 12 hours which I’m sure will royally suck, but it will be nice to have my car there and not have to rent one like years past. It will also be nice to pack my car full of whatever I want to bring that I couldn’t take on an airplane. My car will be jammed full of important stuff like my pillow, X-Box, extra monitors, DVD’s and anything else I can fit in there to make my 7 week stay as comfortable as possible.
So this year will be a lot like last year. I’m sharing the same 8 bedroom house with the same group of guys. I’m looking forward to getting down there and settling in. The first event I plan on playing is the $1500 pot limit Omaha on Monday. Last year I bubbled this event taking 74th with 72 spots being paid. I am excited to play this event, since I feel like my PLO game is far better than it was a year ago. After this event I’m going to play it by ear. I still need to win my main event seat as well. Last year I won it in the very first $500 super I played so I feel confident that I will be playing the main event for the 5th year in a row.
The WSOP is an exciting time of the year, but it can also be a very expensive time as well. Every year I set aside a certain amount to play series events and this year is no different. I see people lose their entire bankroll chasing the dream every year. That’s the nice thing about this time of the year in Vegas. There are smaller tournaments all over the place including The Venetian, and Caesars which can help you build and stretch your WSOP bankroll. If things aren’t going great at the series I will step back and play a few of these tournaments to try get the bankroll built back up. I wish I had the type of bankroll that allowed me to play every series event I wanted, but I’m not willing to drop 100k on the series and damage my bankroll. I will just keep on doing what I do, playing small ball while taking a few cracks at some bigger events. It’s what I’ve done for 7 years so I’m comfortable with it. Maybe someday I will find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that will allow me to play more big events, but if not I’ll be content and happy doing what I do. Playing a game that I love for a living isn’t so bad.
So my WSOP predictions are…Yes of course I’m a UB homer, but I think it’s going to be a big year for the Black n Gold.
Phil wins #12 , then a week later pulls in #13.
Annie wins the 50k HORSE event.
Team UB makes a total of 8 final tables and pulls in 4 bracelets total.
My good friend and roommate Pat Poels wins his 3rd bracelet. Yeah he has 2 and nobody has ever heard of him, but he’s the real deal.
One of my other roommates wins a bracelet.
I make my first WSOP final table.
Someone wearing the UB logo wins the main event. (bout time)
Good luck to everyone at the series.
Debo
Tags: Annie Duke, Ceasar's, omaha, Phil Hellmuth, ub, Vegas, Venetian, WSOP
What happens in Madison…
Hopefully it stays there, because I don’t think my liver could handle a repeat. Wow what a fun 4 days I just had out in Madison.
I along with 2 of my best friends Kurt, and Steve headed out to Madison to hang and play some cards with p0ker h0 and all the wonderful friends I have met over the past 6 or 7 years. The trip started out with a bang as we flew into Milwaukee and the first night ended up at a friends club. The name of the club is named Silk Exotic and is owned by John Ferraro a friend of ours. Of course you can figure out by the name of the club that we might have had some fun with our time spent there. The club closed at 2am but we were there until almost 5am playing Chinese poker with John. Thanks for your hospitality John.
The next afternoon we went to Miller park to see the Brewers play the Marlins. It was a beautiful day and the roof was open for the game. Nothing better than enjoying the sun and a great game. H0 got some good club seats from his Miller distributor. That night we drove into Madison and headed to Players sports bar. ( 2013 Winnebago St. Home of the famous p0ker h0 burger). This was the first of 4 nights we would spend closing h0’s bar down. We always have so much fun hanging out there. All the people are so friendly and fun when we come to town. This was also the beginning of my bar tab…ugh. Thanks to the players girls, Wendy, Laura, and Mindy for taking such great care of us as always.
The next day I got to go sit in on p0ker h0 and wiscomurray’s local radio show called man up with Mark and Mike. The show went well and we all had fun doing it. After the show we met up with the legendary Jon Green for dinner at a local Japanese restaurant. If you don’t know Jon owns a few car dealerships out here, and I have bought my last 3 cars from him. I have owned nothing but pickup trucks for the past 12 years and had been talking to Jon about maybe driving a car instead. So of course Jon knows what I like, and drives a car to dinner he wants to show me. The car was a 06 Mercedes E-350 4matic. The car was beautiful and after about 2 minutes the deal was done. Jon always takes care of me and is the best in the business. If you’re ever in the market for a car let me know, I will send you to Jon.
The next day was Friday and I felt like I had been on a 2 day drinking binge…oh wait I had been. So a ton of people roll into town Friday including Susieque and a ton of her Ecrew players some of whom I had met in past trips and some I had not. All of them are great people and players. We spent the next 2 days playing poker tournaments at the bar and just hanging out. The Saturday tournament was insane. It was a 10$ rebuy that a prize pool of over 5k. I heard p0ker h0s table had over 120 rebuys alone. UB player Steve Verrett aka Low__Chicago does a great job running the tournaments at the bar…big shout out to him. I also got to meet all the rounders radio crew that drove down from Michigan. All of them are super cool and look forward to working with them more in the future.
So in the end my bar tab was closing in on $2,000, ( allegedly) . Apparently Jaeger bombs aren’t cheap in Wisconsin. No the $2000 wasn’t all mine I just enjoy buying drinks for friends, and I had a lot of friends that weekend.
The good news is p0ker h0 can only collect his money for my bar tab if he comes to Oregon for the first time, as this was our deal. We are planning a September weekend when Purdue comes to play Oregon.
Special thanks to everyone for welcoming us to your great state. We had a blast!!
In the words of my buddy Mark “p0ker h0” Kroon…..I’m never drinking again.
Debo
My Vegas trip was pretty short, just 5 days but was filled with nonstop action, and activities. The very first day I participated in Doyle Brunson’s 2nd annual beer pong tournament at hogs and heifers bar in downtown Vegas. UltimateBet was represented well with me, Scott Ian, p0ker h0, Tracy Scala, Hollywood Dave, and Wiscomurray all attending. I was teamed up with Scott for the tournament, which unfortunately for us was short lived. In the first round we played 2 bouncers from the bar, who by the way were defending champions and it showed. They started off hot and it looked like we were going to get destroyed. We actually made it close at the end and had a legitimate chance to win it if we had made just 2 more shots. Scott had never played the game before but he was a natural…no surprise that a rock star would be good at a drinking game. It was an awesome time, with a lot of cool people.
The next day I played the $500 6 max circuit event at Caesars. This tournament was a bit strange in the fact that for the first 6 hours of this tournament every single thing I did seemed to work out perfect. I picked up and had to show down so many big hands early, that a few hours in, it didn’t matter if I had cards or not. I won pot after pot building my stack from 8k to 36k with small pot after small pot with nothing big ever risked. Just when it seemed like I would cruise deep into this tournament, it all came crashing down in 1 big hand. With the blinds at 300/600 a fairly aggressive player made it 1800 from second position. I was on the button and looked down to see KK. The raiser had close to the same stack as was a very aggressive player after the flop even when he missed. The player directly behind me was a player who seemed like he was going broke soon. He was sitting on 14k and I thought it was very likely he might squeeze here as well. He had all of his chips in the middle at least 6 times before this hand. So I decide to flat call and try to trap and win a big pot. The guy behind me immediately raised to 6200 of his 14k. When it folded back to the original raiser he thought for about 20 seconds before announcing he was all in. This became a monster pot for this time in the tournament. Part of me wanted to lay this hand down. Not because I thought I was behind, but because everything had gone right with very little risk so far. I really didn’t want to gamble for all of my chips at this point. It reminded me of some of the things I have heard Phil Hellmuth say in the past, that at the time I heard them I thought were absurd. He was talking about not wanting to get all his money in even though his hand was dominant because he knew he would find better spots with less risk. This all made sense to me at that particular point in time. I knew my hand was good but yet I wasn’t sure I wanted to call. I decided to make the call, and the guy who made it 6200 folds with almost half of his money in the pot. My KK was up against AK and I lost the hand when an ace came on the flop. He had me covered by 900 chips. I went to the rail, and he went to chip leader in the tournament with over 80k in chips. I can’t wait to discuss this hand with Phil next time we are together. I’ve never wanted to fold a hand that I knew was dominant so badly in my life. I know this sounds crazy, as it did to me before I was put in a spot where I felt like I had control of the table like I did that day.
The only good news that came about busting from this tournament is that I got to attend the UB dinner at Fix at Bellagio we had for our Bellagio super sat package winners. Miss C put on a great dinner party and we had a great time drinking and eating, and drinking some more as we got to chat with the winners. When we were finished there we all headed over to play the drunken 11pm tournament at Caesars. Luckily for me I was out in the first 20 minutes so I could get some rest for the next day.
The next day I went and played a $2500 satellite for the 25k WPT championship. As it turns out I really didn’t need to get sleep at all for this tournament as I was out within the first hour when twice I flopped top 2 pair, and twice got caught on the river. Grrrrr
My trip overall was an A+ for fun, and a D- for poker. It’s hard to pay the bills with fun last time I checked, but I guess it could be worse. Besides, I’ll have 7 weeks in Vegas starting late May. I’m sure I will get my fill then.
Good Luck
Debo
Tags: Bellagio, doyle brunson, Fix, Hollywood Dave, P0ker H0, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Ian, Tracy "Fatcats" Scala, ultimatebet, wiscomurray, WPT Championship
Not much to report on the debo34 poker front. I’ve been hanging a lot at home and playing a ton of online poker on UltimateBet. I haven’t been playing many multi table tournaments, instead more cash games and sit n go’s. I have also been playing a local cash game at least 2 nights a week which is more than normal for me.
I have been really into the NCAA basketball tournament as well. Something about tournament time every year that peaks my interest. It really doesn’t matter how many regular season games I watch, or how closely I followed it during the regular season. Once the tournament starts I can sit and watch any and every game. When I was in Reno last month I took the bad end of a bet just because I was sick of hearing how good the Big East was and how they were going to have 3 of the final 4 teams. I made the same bet against 3 of my good friends. I gave them all of the Big East teams plus Duke. I was allowed only to take 3 teams of my choice, and whoever had the last team standing won the bet. Now I realize how bad of a bet this was for me. Since the Big East had 5 top 15 teams, all with a legitimate chance to win it all, and I was taking three, I was getting the bad end here. The 3 teams I chose were Memphis, Oklahoma, and North Carolina. So when the final 4 started, I had North Carolina vs. Villanova and Connecticut. When the 2 games ended the bet was over. Both big east teams lost and North Carolina sealed the bet for me. Now I don’t like to rub it in, but since I really don’t like the Big East, I had to give them the needle a little bit. I sent out a text message to all 3 at the same time. All it said was… “ GG Big East “. That was worth more than the money I won on the bet.
So next week I’m off to the Bellagio to play a couple $2500 satellites for the 25k WPT championship. This will be the 3rd year that I have attempted to get into the 25k. I have never played this event so I really want to give it a good run. This event is obviously huge, and loaded with the best players in the world, and I would love to give it a run.
After Bellagio, it’s back home for a month, then back to Vegas for the better part of 7 weeks for the WSOP. I will be renting a house with 6 or 7 other players/friends. It’s pretty much a repeat of last year, except this year I will always have my new video camera handy and can give weekly footage of some of the antics that go on in the house. It can get pretty entertaining around there.
Good Luck
Debo
Tags: NCAA, Online Poker, Vegas, WSOP
I love the weather in my hometown of Bend, Oregon. You never know what to expect, other than if you don’t like the weather you don’t have to wait long for it to change. Just last week we got 44 inches of snow in a 3 day period in the mountains 20 miles away. It made for an awesome few days of snowmobiling. Just two days later it was 66 degrees and sunny. A few days later we had more snow and cold, and now today its in the mid 60’s again. You get the routine.
So this was intended to be my first video blog. I went out and bought this cool pocket sized video camera called a flip. This thing is pretty awesome, and holds an hour of video footage. So for my first video blog I went up to the mountains with my good friend Kurt to shoot some cool scenery as we went on a snowmobile trek. So right after we unloaded our sleds and got geared up I had Kurt take a quick into video of me in the parking lot. We set out to capture some cool shots all over the place but didn’t last too long. About ½ miles into our ride, the crank shaft of Kurt’s snowmobile broke and we had to tow it back to the trailer with my sled. Not much fun at all! I guess at least that particular video blog will have to wait. I am really looking forward to taking that little camera all over the place and giving you guys a peek into my daily life on and away from the poker tables.
This week I was approached by a group of people who asked if I could help and play in a charity poker tournament in town. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I agreed to go to a meeting, and see what it was all about. After I heard about the sick 3 year old girl in my area named Adrian I was 100% on board. This little fighter has been battling cancer since September 2007, which I’m sure is taking a toll on the family not only emotionally, but financially as well. I’m going to hit the local business for donations for the raffle as well as donate some poker lessons myself.If I happen to cash in the tournament I will donate 100% of my winnings as well. UB always steps up to the plate on this stuff and is sending out gear for the raffle, and I am working on getting a charity tournament set up on UB as well. When I get this event set up I will be calling on any and all UB’ers to come play in this event if possible. I’m going to lay down some bounties on the heads of some pros, and hopefully make as much money as possible for this family.
You can see Adriana’s story here.
Good luck, and see you at the tables
Debo
Tags: charity poker, the Flip, ub
Last week we announced that Debo34 would be answering this weeks ‘Ask a Pro’ question.
The question that Debo chose to answer (by default 
is the most non poker related question we’ve had so far. It has to do with getting a little ‘tipsy’ while playing poker, and whether or not this is something that should be done. Debo34 gives some great wisdom. Every poker player that enjoys the odd dose of spirits has been faced with the question. To drink or not to drink. Sure it can loosen you up, but that is not always good!
Check out Debo’s response in the thread here. http://blog.ultimatebet.com/2009/03/pro-debo34-2/#comments
Check back tomorrow (Friday) afternoon to see who is answering next weeks question. You can take your shot at getting direct poker insights from an Ultimate Bet pro.
GL
Aces
I just got back home from playing live for 17 days at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno for the World Poker challenge. All in all it was a pretty ho hum trip for me. I only had 4 cashes overall, none worth talking about. It was nice to get out and play a live series since I haven’t done that in over 3 months. It was a little tough the first few tournaments fighting the boredom of only playing 1 tournament at a time after playing online everyday for months. I seemed to make it deep most every day but seemed to lose the late coin flip in the end. Although I didn’t make any money playing tournaments while I was there the side action was great. Quite possibly the softest cash games and sit n go’s I’ve seen in quite some time. Thanks to these I was able to come home ahead which I’m happy with considering how bad my results were in tournament play.
So I’m back home for a few weeks now and back to playing online. I was able to get home in time to play the Sunday tournaments on UB. I didn’t cash the 200k, but won the 3pm $30 rebuy for $3300 which was a nice welcome back to online poker. Winning poker tournaments never gets old no matter the buy in or how much you win. I think it’s just a good feeling knowing you are the last one standing.
I think my next trip is to Vegas for the Bellagio in mid April. I see UB is running a $200 satellite to win a $3500 package for the Bellagio. I think I’m going to jump in and play that tonight. Hopefully UB throws one of their legendary parties for all the qualifiers. Either way I plan on going down and taking a few cracks at trying to get into the 25k buy in World Poker Tour Championship.
Hope to see you there
Debo
Tags: Bellagio, World Poker Challenge
Gary ‘Debo34′ Debernardi is one of our online pros here at Ultimate Bet. You can see him in tournaments of all shapes and sizes and his poker knowledge is vast.
This week you can ask Debo34 a question in the comments section of this blog and one lucky reader will get their question answered by Debo34 next Thursday.
Check out his Bio at Ultimatebet.com.
All you need to do is ask Debo34 a question in the comments section of this blog post.
So fire away and learn from an Ultimate Bet pro!
Tags: Ask A Pro, Debo34, online poker pros, Poker Strategy
One of the advantages you have at the online poker table versus a live game is the ability to write and save notes on your opponents. There is too much valuable information out there to just leave to memory. A simple right click on an opponents name and you can start logging valuable information on an opponents habits and tendencies.
Note taking can be very hard when playing multiple games at once so sometimes I will play just one game and take notes on everything I see. Once you’ve built a decent note database your note taking will become less frequent and usually just involve new player notes, and updates on existing players. Since a player’s game will usually change over time, I always date each note that I input.
The more extensive your notes are the better. Notes like “this guy is a donkey”, or “solid”, are fine in determining a general feel for the player, but what you are looking for are specifics. Some examples of my notes on players might look like this.
11/24/08 – player xxxxx
Likes to lead weak when he hits bottom or middle pair, but will fold to a raise
Never bets his draws, but will call huge bets drawing.
Bets his big hands hard
Willing to go broke with 1 pair early in a tournament.
You may even want to include specific hands played against a player for future use.
11/24/08 player xxx
Bet all 3 streets with AK high and he called me down with 44 the whole way. DO NOT BLUFF.
Sometimes I will even include a game plan on how I might want to play a hand in the future against this player based on what I’ve seen from him at the table.
11/24/08
If I flop a big hand against him weak lead the flop, if he calls, check the turn he will bet big almost always here.
In poker any information is good information. Taking notes on players as much as possible can increase your ability to decipher what they are doing, and how to play certain hands against them. Just remember that these are tendencies, and that players can change or improve over time so you need to update any changes you see your opponents making and note them accordingly.
Good Luck
Debo
Tags: Online Poker
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